Circuit Riding

Circuit Riding The Judiciary Act of 1789 required that the justices of the Supreme Court serve also as judges of the circuit courts. The justices complained that circuit riding caused serious physical hardships and diverted them from more important duties in the nation's capital. The southern circuit, for example, required travel of nearly 1,800 miles, twice a year, in a country that had poor roads or, in some places, none at all. The early justices even agreed to take a reduction in salary if Congress would appoint separate circuit judges. Congress, however, believed that circuit riding transformed the justices into republican schoolmasters, who brought federal authority and national political views to the distant states. Through their charges to juries in early criminal cases, for example, the circuit riding justices impressed on the citizenry the authority of the remote national government. Circuit riding also exposed the justices to local political sentiments and legal practices.

Congress in 1801 abolished circuit riding on grounds of efficiency, but a year later a new Jeffersonian Republican majority restored the practice, obliging each justice to hold circuit court along with a district court judge. Gradually, however, improved communications, increasing business in the nation's capital, and the strengthening of American nationhood following the Civil War rendered circuit riding anachronistic. Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1869 established a separate circuit court judiciary, although the justices retained nominal circuit riding duties until the Circuit Court of Appeals Act of 1891 (see Judiciary Act of 1891). Congress officially ended the practice in 1911.

See also Circuit Courts of Appeals.

Kermit L. Hall